Bound Again
by Crosabre
Summary: What does loyalty mean? It means the death of her freedom. It means watching his execution, as though he was a stranger. [GgioSui/GgioSoi].
1. I: A Thousand Distractions

**[**Sabre**]**: Hello, and welcome to a taster of my upcoming, new (yet related) GgioSui fic: a sequel to '**Freedom**'! I'm planning on making a series of sorts, based around the '_Freedom_' story that provides the background to what's written here. So if you haven't read '_Freedom_' (found on my profile), then I'd strongly advise you do so before you read this one! This tale revolves around the repercussions of a certain "mistake", and the countdown of an execution.

I'm aiming for this to be a longer, more developed web of themes and plot-lines, so yes; without further ado, here it is!

* * *

…

…

It's been three nights since that _mistake_.  
And when Sui-Feng retires to her quarters, the desecration of her solemn oaths haunts her.

_'What have I _done_?'_

She's never been kind to herself. Not even as a child.  
The slightest injury, the mildest of wrongs, the simplest of errors, have always induced sleepless nights of self-berating.  
It's enough to reduce her to visit her past, her memories; the budding wings of the fledgling hornet, reacquainted.  
_'What went wrong?'_

_Before the Onmitsukidō._  
_Before Yoruichi-sama._  
_Before the Gotei Thirteen._

That night, her dreams are influenced by the cold.  
She dreams as winter's will becomes manifest, and the season devours the Seireitei in a steady pall of snow.

_She's reminded of long, long ago, when even her ancient, forgotten name is unveiled amidst the relics of her history._

* * *

**_Approximately two-hundred years ago._**

|| The Feng House Courtyard ||

"_Up._"

Shaolin Feng's sword instructor remarks, in colourless rectitude. Thus, with adherence to intuition and resolve to perform to her highest possible standards to find approval, the young girl's bokken came up, slanted diagonally in reflex to counter the elder's downward sweep. Her poise is firm, but rigid, and easily toppled by fluidity; he demonstrates the importance of suppleness with a simple multiplication of his prior instruction.

"Up, right, right."

Just as before, she raises the wooden shaft to deflect his practised blow, but when she whirls her training sword upon its guard to protect herself from his rightward assault, her legs stammer, troubled to parry in the same direction - and all it takes is but a gentle rap to untie her clumsily-braided legs to spill the nubile assassin into the frozen snow. It's a cruel, vindictive winter, following the blessed climate of the long, fruitful summer. The cold presents its jealousy in frequent, debilitating snowstorms that undo all of the festive, vivacious colours that the sunlight had bequeathed upon the Feng family grounds and left it in stark monochrome.

Half-buried by the bone-chilling sleet, the thwarted little fighter forages around inside what she thought might well become her grave to fish out the sodden weapon. Two numb, red-raw to the bone hands grapple around the hilt, and slender grey eyes scowled in effrontery.

"Why do we have to fight out here?!" Shaolin yells, too adorable to even constitute impertinence. "I'm too cold to move! I can't feel my fingers!"

The family sensei strikes against her knuckles without warning, the movement fluid and lightning-swift.  
She doesn't see it coming.

"_Ahh_…!" She hisses through bared teeth, the bokken sinking defeatedly into the snow.  
"What did you do that for?! I'm not going to learn from being _frozen alive_!"

This time, rather than expend any quickly-deteriorating energy on excavating out her exercise blade, Shaolin's hand nuzzles between her lips. She sucks meekly on the wound, gloomy, absorbing any heat within the cavern of her mouth with the raw, pink stain adorning her skin.

"Block one attack in the deepest heart of winter, and block a thousand elsewhere." The wizened old sage plunges the tip of his wooden sabre into the courtyard. "Winter has nine-hundred and ninety-nine distractions; the cold, the insensitivity, the loss of sight, of hearing, of taste and scent, but a number of them. Anywhere else in the world, and you never would have lost your sword to that technique. The bitterness of winter is the most able of teachers, more so even than myself."

That message wouldn't embed itself into her psyche until far, far later.  
As for now, the increasingly petulant madam is busying herself inside the gelid wasteland to capture whatever resembles her forfeit, wooden sword.

* * *

**_The_**_** present**._

|| Onmitsukidō Training Grounds. ||

_Snowfall.  
Light, drifting shards of the heavens._

In the shadows of dawn, Sui-Feng stands before a limping Ggio Vega.  
They're within the covert training grounds of the Onmitsukidō, long before the hours of collective duty. Those with missions won't return until far into daybreak, and those who are invited to train do so after six strokes of the hour hand past midnight. With two hours left to spare, the Captain surveys her weathered, tormented captive with a judicial eye. The snow's ample upon the terrain, reminiscent of that day two-hundred years ago; it leaves a barren, unearthly desolation upon the world, and leaves the two warriors alone as though they're the only two entities which are left within the throes of an apocalyptic land strewn by ashes.

She's suppressing everything that's transpired between them; the mistake unspoken, burned into each other with their ardent, intoxicated stares alone - though she raises no such topic of conversation between them. She's forgetting, she's erasing, and leaving no trails behind.

The Arrancar suffers at first; he's been incarcerated inside the rotting darkness for so long, that the bright, extreme contrast of the pale white snow blinds him. He's squinting, cringing; his legs bow and sway like broken masts, and his body heaves with the uneasy, wounded lurches of an abuse victim.

Wordlessly, albeit with a coquettish cant of her lips, Sui-Feng casts a blank sword through the air towards her foe.  
Ggio scarcely manages to catch it, and his natural predilection in combat has the bandaged hilt slide into his palm in a reverse-grip. He's scarred in the unkind, bloodied aftermaths of yet more interrogations, and the awareness that his uses are running their course is prevalent between the pair of condemned lovers. All that's left is to restore and remove; the easiest path to do so, in her mind, is to revert the egotistical Arrancar back to his position as an enemy of the Soul Society.

"Careful not to drop it, now," she remarks, facetiously. He's out of his depth, and the rustiness is showing already.  
"I could say the same about your clothes, _Captain_," Vega scoffs, close to _lunging_ at her for that slight alone.

And she's close to lunging back for that unnecessarily _low_ swipe.

"Come on, then," she welcomes, suspending Suzumebachi towards her opponent. "Unless you're scared, of course. But either way, I'll kill you regardless."  
"No," he replies, flatly lowering his weapon to his side in a dampened shrug. "What, you think I'm your lapdog now that you've given me a little breathing space? Get real." There's embers of the spirited flame they kindled nights ago still in there; his eyes are embers, his smile is moonlight, they're reminders, and every time she steals a glance from them she's stealing pieces of the mistake she's failing to stow away and lose. "You don't _own_ me, Captain."

_It's becoming a losing battle for her, that's for sure._

"Not _yet, _Arrancar."

"Is that a _promise_?"

She sneers, at herself, then at him.  
She feels pathetic again. _Hollow_. Laughable.  
The venerable teacher she one had was right:

_The winter is glutted with distractions, and all nine-hundred and ninety-nine swathe them as their blades collide. _


	2. II: A Thousand Struggles

…

…

* * *

**_Approximately two-hundred years ago._**

|| Hueco Mundo ||

_La Cuchillada._  
That's what they called him, all those years ago.  
'_The Slash_'.  
Named so because of the luminosity of his eyes. Bright, gleaming yellow studs buried within the sockets of a skeletal mask, which are so potent that they trailed in the aftermath of his movements like golden contrails. They leave near-tangible 'slashes' in the air upon the wake of his sudden attacks, and are the last sights those that are victim to his assassinations bear witness to before their insides are dragged out through their trachea.

The felid, sabre-toothed design of Ggio Vega's Hollow form presses its forepaw upon the strangled, beaten neck of a conquered enemy. The subjugated foe writhes powerlessly, and its drained vitality spurts freely from the lethal punctures delivered into the jugular. Vega stands proudly above his bloodied prey, and the occupation of the latest civilisation by Baraggan Louisenbairn's immeasurable kingdom instils the ancient general with a pedestal of vanity. The tyrant himself oversees the capture of the potential soldiers, and the executions of the legions of the weak; there is no justice here other than the primordial variant of natural selection conjured into reality by the exercise of the Six Dragons of the Skeleton King.

_Two of the Dragon's Flame, killers and purgers of the weak - Ggio Vega, and Findorr Calius._  
_Three of the Dragon's Eyes, scouters and recruiters of diamonds in the rough - Chuhlhourne, Choe Neng Poww, and Abirama Redder.  
And the Seat of the God, the Dragon's Back, Nirgge Parduoc: a vast, behemothic Hollow war elephant upon whose mighty back rests King Baraggan's Howdah._

High above, the aviary predator of Abirama Redder circles the cloudless winds - scouting out those who resist, plucking them steeply into the moonlit sky before breaking their bones and reforging them into the cast-iron obedience demanded by the thankless, unholy armies of the Skull Emperor. Choe Neng Poww swallows entire battalions of the undeserving beneath the monumental dimensions of his fist, reducing the surrounding area to that of an earthquake fallout. Findorr Calius, the masked lobster, beheads those puny elements who would not enrich nor reward the regal domain.

And Ggio Vega prowls through the lines of the dying and the enfeebled, fatally injecting his sleek, protrusive canines into vital junctions to arrest their souls.

"Here's a question," the armoured sea creature of Findorr sneers, decapitating a fallen Hollow with a simple snip as though the tough, grisly flesh is naught but the dry bark of a tree. It's a clean, fluid stroke - like shearing hair - and the severed cord of its throat (along with the remnants of its deceased carcass) ripples away in a plume of deep, black particles. "You didn't leave a single one alive. Now, why is that? You know about His Majesty's propensity for large numbers."

"They're _weak_," the sabre-tooth snarls, chewing on the marred, sinewy tendon of a dismembered limb. "That's all there is to it."

Findorr disagrees; the God-King Baraggan Louisenbairn has never entertained himself with the more _necessary_ _articles_ within his reach, with the more crucial and significant servants within his kingdom, but has always taken a liking to the gladiatorial combat of nameless slugs to duel it until their blood is dried into the sands.

But that's the trivia-brandishing Adjuchas all over: always a flair for the joyous, the pomp and the ceremonious. Ggio Vega has never held much of a penchant for amusements; he considers them petty nonsenses and little other than distractions. The years will whittle down his rigidity, the ease of his duties will carve sarcastic grooves into his personality, and the oncoming doom of time itself will burn the fires of a fatalist who has nothing to lose but his head and his pride.

So when Vega slinks away to finish off what dregs of the defeated linger on without a further word, Findorr leaves the adopted stray to his labours.

_Because they're weak.  
They're all so weak._

* * *

**_The present._**

|| Onmitsukidō Training Grounds. ||

_He's weak._

Ggio Vega parries a horizontal swipe from the Captain's relentless assault, but his rusted, worn constitution leaves him susceptible to the more versatile Sui-Feng's wheeling leg. He's knocked twice by the blow: the first is the more physical onslaught of wind driven from his stomach, while the second is from irony; it's his strategy to pock holes in an opponent's defences with sporadic ambushes from the propulsions of sharp, frightful feet. Vega's footing crumbles from the strike, and he leaves his chest wide open for his enemy's perfectly-positioned sole to thrust itself punishingly into his sternum. Ggio hits the wall hard, his body burning.

The Hornet approaches him, steel eyes lancing through him with disgust.  
When he assumes hold over his weapon's guard, the underside of her zōri pins his palm against the studded metal.

"What's wrong? Can't take a few hits?" She goads, searching for signs of resistance that she so adores sinking her teeth into.  
His teeth grit, audibly grinding together like nails on a chalkboard. _That bitch_…!

_She offers him a chance to regain dominance, to assert himself once more, and now this…_

His free hand claws towards her calf muscle, intending on ripping out what chunks of meat the Captain can yield. But she's two steps ahead of him, every time, and his efforts are rewarded by the stake of Suzumebachi through the extremity into the ground. He's dizzied, frenzied, unafraid of rending the nerves and veins wired beneath the perforated layers of skin to salvage his freedom. Blood rushes from the impalement, and her sword stands above him like a symbol of bondage.

_He's frustrated. He's irrational.  
Nothing should ever enslave him. Nothing should so easily rupture his pride, nor his blood vessels._  
_But it does._

_Because he's weak._

When Sui-Feng retreats her foot and kneels down before him, he lashes out. She expertly catches his wrist in her hand, and examines the Arrancar's racing pulse with the most deceptively soft stroke of her thumb - all the while, skewered with but a glare in all manner of colourful curses, hexes, and damnations.

"You didn't last very long," she comments, but this time isn't meant as a penalty, nor as a taunt. It's the truth. But it carries that connotation, and for one who is so ruled by that deplorable Arrancar pride, it's just as synonymous as spitting in his face. "You were pathetic. You'll die in an instant when they call for your head."

She feels his arm tense in her grip, but she's unapologetic.  
Uncaring, however, is another matter altogether.

"What, you've suddenly started caring about whether I live or die?" Somehow, he twists his lips into a grimacing smile, fighting off the droves of maddening irritation in the requiem of his ego and the insult of her Zanpakutō lodged into his hand, to supplant them with wild, seething defiance. "I'm _flattered_, really."

_He hates this woman. He hates her._

_He hates them all, really. He hates how easily they can look upon him every day, and do as they wish with him._  
_How they can prize him open with any weapon, any steel, any instrument they deem of interest to them._

_And how she requires absolutely no weapon at all to leave him ajar, open, accessible._  
_He knows how he's corrupted her. How irresistibly they pined over one another.  
_

"I'm still undecided, actually." And as much as she tries so desperately to appear disinterested, non-partisan, unbiased and generally as aloof as her contract with the Soul Society demands she should be, Sui-Feng still cannot hide the desire crooking her voice into unevenness. "If I cut off that pretty, loud head of yours, I wouldn't have to worry about anyone blurting out the _lies_ about what _we_ have. And if I _didn't…_" she trails away, her straying sight meandering with admiration across the tapestry of injuries that adorn her ragged little toy. Perhaps she is, deep down, just as vicious and calumnious as him.

Sui-Feng rests the curl of her forefinger inside the alcove of Ggio's throat, just beneath his chin.  
She's met with surprisingly scant contention from her adversary, especially when their eyes are sealed by one another's gaze.

"_I'd be the worst Captain in the history of the Gotei Thirteen._"

That's sense talking.  
_Forced sense._

Before she's haplessly transfixed again, she juts her knuckle into his larynx with one hand, and with the other unsheathes her blade from his flesh.  
He topples onto his back from the force, the currents of crimson leaving him scarred, scowling, and as viciously unappealing as she _needs_ him to be.

"Expect your sentence within the fortnight."  
"That's an awfully short time to fall in love with me, Captain."

She scoffs, but with nothing to say.


	3. III: A Thousand Torments

[**Sabre**]: Tad bit rusty, so apologies as I begin chipping my way back into this story! Anyway, towards the later part of the chapter there's a little bit of NSFW bordering MA-ish territory regarding smut, so take a little caution of that here. I kept it as vaguely detailed as I could without it becoming overly explicit, but let me know how you find the chapter and I'll be updating this again as soon as the inspiration hits me! (Or my other half.)

* * *

"Tomorrow?"  
"_Tomorrow_."

Ggio's hoarse incredulity isn't much of a surprise for her. Arrancar cling to their precious lives as if they've not already lost everything, and prideful specimens - like the one she continues to pierce her sights into - is no different. Returned to his cell, he's adorned in clods of filth and grime; it's incredibly unbecoming for a vain cur who refers to himself as a King's mighty Dragon, but then again, she's no time nor interest in grandiosity.

_He's better when he's dragged down a peg or two, anyway._  
_The little rat needs to learn his place._

"Tomorrow. Your time of usefulness to the Soul Society's up."  
"Didn't take your time, did you?" He hisses, his humour colourless. "Want me dead that badly?"

She looks at him, and it's been quite some time since the assassin's been touched by pity. She could end his misery now, run a blade between his chatty teeth and up through his brain. She'll have to be precise though; she's quite sure it's a miniature target. She could end everything. She has that power. He's a belligerent enough creature, an _Arrancar_: it's believable that he'll create a situation demanding a swifter demise than by the break of dawn tomorrow.

But she doesn't cave.  
She doesn't do it.

In fact, she doesn't _want_ to.  
It's not rare that she's grateful for the Central 46 and their draconian judiciary measures. But these circumstances have warped her.  
Warped _everything_.

"It wasn't me who created the order."  
_Gods _(if there _are_ any) _how much of a toil is it to keep a level voice?_  
Neutrality is what she has to force through. Neutrality isn't what she receives.

"No? Sounds like something you'd say," he's not picky with his words. But he's _fast_ with them. He always has been.  
"Yes," she acquiesces, retort slithering between smooth, toying caramel lips. "It _does_, doesn't it?" That scowling, pretty face of his demands her pretentious whispers. Her daring wisps of breath, crafting covetous words, like the silk webs of a spider luring its prey. She dips her finger into the avalanche of unsightly, messy black hair, coiling it slowly, teasingly, into the braids he's been shed of. "Casting _judgement_ down upon you," she tugs him closer, her taunting aperture listlessly bestowing his neck with the chilling melody of her cunning derisions. "Choosing when you live, die… whether you're a predator or a pet… Yes, I suppose it does sound exactly like something I'd say." When she's twisted the lengths of his mane around her finger, she pulls rigidly upon it in order to dose him with some pain.

He snarls, cusses, and she grins impishly.  
She's getting a little too much _enjoyment_ out of that.

"To a measly little thing like you, Vega, it really… truly… _does_."

"You know, my last few hours have really brought out a pain in the ass in you, haven't they?" His throat's bone dry. It comes out as a guttural rasp at first, a failed roar, and his animalistic side encourages further demeaning by means of Sui-Feng's head cocking itself in parody to one side.  
"Oh, am I making your last night alive unbearable?"  
"A little bit. Can't you at least pout? You'll miss me."  
"Would you prefer it if I got you a pillow for your back, too?"  
"Oh, you're a delight."  
"_I know_."

It's impossible for her to describe the heat with which their eyes are glued, like a solar flare it's both blinding and legendary. The sparse distance between them radiates with such powerful ignition that it's as though they've gained their own independent fields, drawn towards each other with flame and gravity alike.

_A collision's inevitable. Two great, irresistible planets hurtling into one another's orbits._

Or so she thinks.  
Their heads incline, steeping themselves in miserable, wretched lust. In depravity. In all they have. _Closer. _Her heart throbs so punishingly in her chest she swears its tangible upon her lips, when they near them. A looming horizon of that heat again. It's on the cusps of his chiselled, cut mouth. _Closer. __  
_

_It's the heat of something that'll burn her up. It's danger incarnate.  
Inch by inch, they're closer. And closer._

"No," she says, suddenly retreating from the aborted kiss.  
"_No?_" He sounds offended. One could easily have overlooked the wound, though. The hurt. "It's a little too late for _that_, don't you think?"

"It's too late for _anything_ now," Sui-Feng asserts herself, coercing out that callous, obdurate side of herself. One could easily have overlooked the hurt _there_, too. When she blinks, her character regresses back into that merciless, shrouded Captain he once didn't know. The mask is donned, and his chances are extinguished.

_He's gone._  
_That's it._

The pad of her thumb crawls along his neckline, reminding him all too vividly of where his King once beheaded the condemned.  
"I don't love _dead men_."

One of Kurotsuchi's machines couldn't have orchestrated a more heartless coup de grâce.

"The day you got down on your knees and wept a confession out to me, _Captain,_ would be the day I _ate_ myself out of these damn chains. Then I'd wake up. If you think I'm here to slap a ring on you and call you my _sweetheart_, you need your head kicked in."

"Still talking?"  
It's all she can quip back with. She notices how he still, even now, refers to her as nothing but her rank. No name. No involvement. _Nothing_.  
He's _Hollow_. Through and through, the bastard's chest is as empty as Omaeda's porcine skull.

He knows her name.  
He knows she's Sui-Feng. He's heard her inferiors add it onto _Captain_ every time she enters the room. But he still doesn't utter it. Not _once_. It's missing tenderness, humanity; it's refreshing, comforting, to acknowledge him as an _Arrancar_ once again. She's close to _thanking_ him for that sudden grounding in reality.

Close, but not there. Not yet. Not _ever_.

"Well, got any other ideas of what I'm supposed to do? I'm not exactly _free _now, am I?"

Oh, that voice.  
That _anger_. That _frustration_. It's all _too_ _much_.  
_If you won't use my name, then I'll make you scream it, you bastard._

"No," she meanders towards him - her hand, more of a claw, ensnaring the sensitive, vulnerable length between his legs without kindness nor grace. There's a way she can express herself not through a kiss, not through adoration, but through her duty as jailor. He's here to _whimper_, and _break_.  
And she intends on fulfilling that.

"But _I_ am."

She begins slowly, trailing middle and forefinger along either side of the shaft. Languidly, up, then down, in a hypnotic trance. _Up. Then down_._ Then again. And again._ Over, and over, moderating every pulse which quakes throughout the stiffening member. She's studying him, every breath measured, noticing the quickness when, through the smooth fabric, she combs her fingertips against the head; she concentrates there for a moment, her thumb circling, savouring every restrained moan, every hastened inhale, then every shaken exhale…

_She's becoming a little sadist._  
_Maybe she's always been one, how she's treated him._

She's deaf to his oh-so _romantic_ growl of, '_what the hell do you think you're doing, bitch?_'

She's immune to his charms.  
She's a _torturer_ at heart.

And a _torturer_ is where she'll remain.

"What would you do, if I were to release you?" She asks, in sultry quiet.  
"I'd kill you. _Slowly_."

And that's enough for her.

_Hate me, scorn me, and I'll make it lasting. I promise.  
__It's the only mark I want left of me inside you when you die.  
I want this to be indelible when you're dragged up to the scaffold. I want you to hate me.  
I want you to feel strongly for me, as I do you._

_This is all we can have, this hate of ours._

While she caresses her prisoner, with agonising patience, Sui-Feng memorises it all. She remembers his shape, where he's most prone to ecstasy. She makes _him_ remember, too: she strokes once, then twice, knowingly, along the contour of the single, throbbing vein as if to say '_you're mine_', '_this is mine_'. She remembers how he felt inside her, how he moved, how deeply and how ravenously he filled her. She remembers that he's her _captive_, and that her mercy is non-existent. He's here for a _reason_, and that reason is to _suffer_. Her benevolence is slighter still, and at the first, clear drop of his body's surrender, she stops entirely. And gauges.

Their faces are flushed, libidinous, passionate.  
There's so much spoken between them when they exchange their sights once again.  
_I hate you._  
_I need you._

_So which one is it, Vega?_

"Fuck you," he growls.  
_Good answer._

_Now let me make your last night an absolute nightmare for you.  
Since we're enemies, this is all we can have._

_This is everything we can have._

_So suffer well, then._


	4. IV: A Thousand Enemies

|| Sōkyoku Hill. ||

"Ggio Vega, you are hereby sentenced to die."  
The judge's words still ring in his ears, like fingers flicking against his lobe. It's a touch painful, but it's more humiliating. The process along serves as nothing more than an indignity, and for something so primal, so subservient to his baser side than these robed runts, it's a dishonour. His pride has suffered a sequence of debilitating blows in the past few weeks, none more so than at the literal hands of the Second Division Captain.

Who is watching this very execution, like the indifferent bitch she tries so damn hard to be.  
But he knows what she really is.  
He could spill everything.  
He could _ruin _her.

But instead, the Twenty-Sixth Arrancar resists against his shackles, and drives visual daggers wickedly towards the aloof bastards assembled before him.

"Get on with it, then," he clamours like a feral animal, the exhausted remnants of what ridiculous pride has birthed this mess jarring as he does so. He can palpably sense himself bristling, reacting, perhaps even over-reacting. He's regressing. That's what he picks up on. He's regressing back into those oafish, dullard pieces of shit who were brought before His Majesty hundreds of years ago and fought to the very end, to the very bitter, headless end, against their ineluctable fate. His Grace Baraggan Louisenbairn saw that their fights, as individual or whole, were in vain.

He can't say he has the same respect for these.  
It was Baraggan's, whose ax fell upon their trembling throats.  
It was their Lord and King beneath whom the snivelling cowards lost their skulls.

"Very well, then," the judge announces, with a pinch of asperity. "Ggio Vega, Arrancar and enemy to the Soul Society: By value of the Sokyōkō's repairs, and the Hollow Pits a discontinued practice, then we will preserve the balance of souls in the unanimously-elected means of execution by Zanpakutō. It has been decreed that your manner of death will be the the surety of decapitation; an ancient form discovered in-"

_Hueco Mundo_, Ggio finishes mentally. He doesn't need to be patronised by that.  
He had front row seats to every damn example. A dragon needs no lessons in history from a sheep.

"Yes, yes," an anonymous second judge of the Central 46 representatives says, impolitely. "He's an Arrancar, blast it all; Arrancar don't need formalities."

And so, the ceremony begins.  
No pomp, no parade… _nothing_.  
It's insult after insult with these insects, and every word is laced with salt.

"What's the matter," Vega fires off one final fusillade of mirth upon passing. "Too _senile_ to remember how to hold a sword yourself, old man?"

Sui-Feng is more than aware that binding the wielder of Tigre Estoque's tongue isn't what quells him. In fact, the intensity of his glare now finds itself upon her. He doesn't remove it as he's dragged by, and it's only through her purposeful aversion that their stern, burning eye contact subsides. They're only as strong as the other; while there's no pleading from him, there's no begging, nor prostration to spare him, there is no mourning, no grief, on hers. They must return to the stone pillars from whence they came, and he must become as impassable and ravenous as the sands of the Hollow Desert, while she must be as imperturbable as the thousands of years of Shinigami history upon which she stands and symbolises here. They have to lose what they are, in order to maintain what they have.

_It's painful. There'll be no inner denial from the two that it is._  
_He means freedom to her, an expression only he's ever received. _  
_And she… Well, he'll just say she helps to pass the time._

He'd laugh about that, if the circumstances warranted laughter.

When she looks upon the unsophisticated wooden block that'll terminate her relationship with her fledged wings and the freedom of the skies she so longs to taste, Sui-Feng recalls back to that wintry day, punished by the voice and expertise of her mentor. _Winter has nine-hundred and ninety-nine distractions_, he said. Here, in the sights of those who would look upon the predators of souls they deem as killers and scavengers - _the Arrancar_ - she feels as though there's a blizzard upon her.

_The distractions wound her, scythe into her, breed more distractions, then repeat their parasitic life cycle._

She feels sick to her stomach, and he fares no better.

It's only when he's cast down upon his knees by the masked arbitrator, and then wrestled by the soles of their footwear - as though he's some spiny, toxic creature whose very contact with them would summon a blight of illnesses - into the dipped collar of the block, that he realises the primordial stirring of _fear_ deep inside.

Fear's associated with fight or flight, really. Reserved for instances of an impending death. There would be no power, no presence of death, without _fear_.

He's always carried his King's philosophy of fatalism. He's been renowned for it. Even within the dunes of Hueco Mundo, there would be whisperings about how Baraggan's four-legged stooge absorbed everything from the Tyrant of Skulls, even elements of his mindset. Arrancar are naturally egotistical beings, so the demise of their compatriots is of very slight concern to them; Ggio has eradicated that entirely, to the point where he would not even find sorrow in His Majesty's death. But it's so very easy to construct thoughts and creeds, and associate oneself with them. When death suddenly veers into view, the flimsiness of mortal doctrines becomes transparent enough to crumble with the end of one's life. Ggio Vega feels that now, and he feels the ephemeral nature of everything he's ever known.

He manages to wrench his attention upward, towards the faceless spectre who'll finish his legend.

"You're not doing a good job of _hurrying this up_, are you?"

_Sui-Feng grins. The bastard's got some nerve, but at least it's truthful nerve._  
_The protraction of this makes it unbearable, worse even than the act itself._

She won't turn away, though.  
She won't look away from the fall of the blade.

She can imagine its impact, and a growth of nausea wells in her throat.

These two iron figures in each respective army, Arrancar and Shinigami, affected by such insolent queasiness as this. It's enough to make her laugh.  
But as a certain someone's already thought before, _these circumstances don't warrant laughter_.

The tide washes over their mark in the ground, and leaves it as naught but a lesion in the earth. Nameless, unidentifiable, and precisely what the Onmitsukidō Commander-in-Chief seeks. She's always fought to become fleeting, insubstantial, and now this short, meaningless venture into freedom is about to be clipped.

The executioner's sword elevates high, eclipsed by the blinding radiance of the winter sun.

She looks upon him, and he looks upon her.  
Why is it that nothing else deserves that final glimpse?  
_They are nothing. They have to be nothing._

But in that final moment, in that desperate revelation as to who he is, she blends into his _everything_.

_And the Zanpakutō falls._

* * *

|| Shinigami Research and Development Institute ||

Throughout the Seireitei, the emergency alarm resonates.

"Woah! Woah; oh, no!" Rin Tsubokura panics, scrambling from his swivel chair; his quickened gait mirrors his heartbeat, as a throng of pulsing amber lights flare across the communications relay maps of the human world. His fingers rap upon the keys, and a muttered mantra shakily leaves him;

'N_o_,' he whispers, '_oh, no no no…!_' Sweat crowns him, as others crowd around the vibrant, startling display.

"What is it? Hollows?" A fellow researcher comments, eyeing the screen. "Looks about a dozen or so. That's no big problem, right?"

"No, it is! I-it's a huge problem!" Rin stammers, pawing in blind frenzy for the message service line for the Sōtaichō. He's stopped by a more reassured, albeit less informed, hand upon his shoulder from the very same scientist.

"The Shinigami in that area's got it just fine, Rin," the other says. "Look, they're trained for this-"

"No, _you_ look!" It's stunning how a moment of crisis transforms the meek and timid into valiant protagonists. With a worried, uneasy firmness, the Chief Operator of the Communications Research Section jams his finger with all the force his infantile frame can muster. "Look at the screen! You know the protocol, don't you?!"

The researcher, memory jogged, leans forward with a frowned, knitted brow.

"Red's one Hollow," he recites. "Blue is a group of ten to a hundred, so gold's…"

All across the city of Karakura Town, the bright, aurulent circles flare.

"A thousand or more," swallows Rin.

_This time, the other researcher doesn't hold the Chief Operator back._


	5. V: A Thousand Screams

|| Sōkyoku Hill. ||

Chaos awakens.

"_What? What's happening?!"_

Clamours of confusion sweep throughout the Seireitei like a plague, infesting every column and patrol with suspense. High atop the Sōkyoku Hill, the execution of Ggio Vega commences undisturbed - until the very moment that at the peak of the executioner's Zanpakutō, the sonorous drone startles the assembly of judges. The executioner, preened for sacrosanct ceremonies of quiet and solemnity, loses his focus. For the split second that his weapon glides off-angle, there's movement.

_"We're under attack? Is that it?! Why is the emergency alarm going off?!"_

The movement is from the condemned.  
The Arrancar smiles, and twists his body across the block beneath the cleaving blow.

_"Find out where that noise is coming from! We must have order!"_

The fang of the Zanpakutō burrows clean through the restraints, and the Sabre-Tooth liberates himself in a fluid motion across the wooden stand of his intended banishment from life. He rolls atop it, his hands becoming unrepentant claws which overshadow the horrified lead judge. He reverts back to the Hollow he once was; every fragment of his reason and composure is decimated beneath the veneer of a barbarian. He relishes in the sensation of driving his jagged, overgrown nails through the overseer's mask; it's the thrill only of a monster, and he drowns himself in the blood-thirsty ecstasy he has for so long been withdrawn from.

His fingers plunge through socket and skull, crumpling bone and flaying skin as razor-lined cuticles lodge themselves in a flurry of deep, liquid scarlet.

Ggio's teeth expose themselves in a moon of uncivilised destruction, and native, aurulent eyes skewer the conceited magistrate's soul. The Arrancar bares his own destiny, and cultivates it in clean view of those who seek nothing other than to deprive him of that. Being without shackles is an enviable state, and the loose hybrid of Hollow and Shinigami is unafraid to gloat before those dogmatised by legions of written words and codes. He peers upon horrified eyes, his smile widened.

_An effulgent, cerise Cero forms at point-blank range, engulfing the screams of a man whose features will remain permanently anonymous.  
A swift, uncompromising incineration makes sure of that._

_"The prisoner! The prisoner's escaped!"_

There's a nightmare atop Sōkyoku Hill.

"So stop him!" Sui-Feng yells, overcoming her admiration for such sheer determination to live on the captive's quarter. When the soldiers hesitate upon the sight of the smouldering, headless corpse of the judge plunging upon the scream-studded earth, the Hornet's ferocity propels skyward. There's frustration in her voice.

Frustration that if she can't have her freedom, then neither should he.

With steel and fury now moulded across her tongue, she roars; "that means _all_ of you!"

"What's the matter, Captain?" Vega sculpts spiritual energy around his hand, and catches the futility of an oncoming blade with scant effort. He doesn't need to win her attention; from the moment he made a mockery of them - _her_, more than any other - she's been trained upon him unwaveringly. "Scared of letting me go?"

She dissipates from her position, and the very Shinigami he intends to sink his foot into becomes replaced by the forearm of the Captain he's spurned. The nameless warrior is delivered into the ground with a disturbingly loud splinter of what could be bones; his superior officer spares nothing, not even his welfare, in order to capitalise upon slaying an enemy. And that's what they must continue to be, never overcoming their differences, their impossibilities, and what they are.

What they _really_ are.

"_Nice shot,_" Ggio japes, eluding the friction between their bodies in an agile leap backward. "Though, why didn't you go straight for my spine? I was _wide_ _open_."

"I guess I just disliked him more than you," Sui-Feng comments back, her verbal joust spurring the draw of Suzumebachi's first three inches.

Their stare-down is interrupted by the fading of the ubiquitous, emergency siren, and its replacement by rows upon rows of Garganta. They stretch forth from thin, horizontal lines, and the dimensional fabric unveils itself as a torrential whorl of viscous, black energy. The tooth-like throats of gateways do not espy upon the barren landscape of Hueco Mundo, but instead converge upon the Living World. The portals first have the impression of mirrors; they convey the same dim, cinereous overcast which enshrouds the Soul Society, but upon further inspection, all form a single point of confluence down upon the ruins of what was once the very town the Shinigami once swore to defend. Awe descends, then fear, and finally - _silence_.

Karakura Town has been ravaged, razed, and reduced to rubble.  
Throughout its streets is the victory trampling of tens upon thousands of Hollows who infect it.

Great, towering spires of mankind's construction and industry become toppled by an invisible wrath of an equally invisible God. The humans cannot perceive anything; what they see is merely a force of nature. One moment a dear companion in their lives might be shrieking for them to flee, to run, and the next they dissolved into ashes. And then that person faded. And another. The soul count becomes innumerable. The bodies littering the floor becomes entombed by the flames of the debris. The chassis of buildings burn until skeletonised, flooding the winds with a conceivable aroma of brimstone.

_There's Hell amok upon this earth._

The inhabitants cannot run from that which they cannot see. There's thousands of Hollows, tens of thousands; they invade every home, every sanctuary, every shelter; human deities cannot prevent the coming of their ends. An apocalyptic aura exudes forth, as those who remain are no longer rapt in hysteria and woe, but weep with acceptance as a phantom wind of annihilation circuits throughout the town. The attacks are organised, strategised; they're an _army_.

_Words cannot divulge the trauma which unfolded before the helpless eyes of the Soul Society._

_"Two thousand, eight-hundred and sixty-three!  
Three thousand, five-hundred and fifty-nine! Four thousand!"  
Rin shrieks in consternation, calculating the losses as they distribute across the fallen city._

"Who would…?" Sui-Feng finds herself staring, lost, bewildered. "Why are there so many, why all at once…?!"

"Oh," Ggio proudly proclaims, above the ambience of illimitable searing carcasses. "_About time_."

"You _knew_ about this?" It comes as a rasp, a damaged, almost _hurt_, rasp. Betrayal is another strong ingredient in her reaction.

"Why wouldn't I?"

Far, far below upon the terrain of the Living World - though _living_ it is no more - a plated, cuspidate boot plants itself firmly, among the victorious conquest. At once, the very ground itself opens up in a melted, rotten basin of decay; life is warped from a single step, and reeks of an ancient, sodden grave. It is the figure of one whose existence scrolls past, far before the chronology of time. Far before word, and action, and reality. The cavernous, ageless eyes of an unimaginable evil which has overlooked the creations of a thousand Gods, and a thousand Devils, reflect upon the fleshless skull strangled within a mighty hand of bones.

"A Dragon always knows the movements of his _King_."

The undying God-King of Hueco Mundo, Baraggan Louisenbairn, holds within his hand the skinned cadaver of Ichigo Kurosaki.

The boy had been an impudent challenger, whose home now lies as the foundation stone of a fatalistic empire of dust. The vertebrae is soaked by thinned, discoloured dregs of putrefied skin, and snap backward upon a sickening, broken axis which now hangs limply, suspending a lifeless, slack-jawed skull smattered by unrecognisable tufts of withered, orange hair. A still, frozen hand has relinquished its grasp upon Zangetsu, and the motionless, slim, onyx sword rests like a tombstone within the shade of the lifted, decomposing shape of its wielder. A portrait of the utmost macabre expands for the many miles of the town's reaches.

Firmly anchored into the ground is the double-headed ax of Gran Caída, the spectral, looming black omen instilling all who bear witness to it with trepidation.

_It's buried through the mangled, unidentifiable, cloven image of Orihime Inoue._

The Tyrant of Skulls looks upon the audience of the Soul Society's advance forces, and invites this upon them:

A declaration not for war, but extermination.

_Welcome, you ants, to the Skeleton Emperor's Court of Bones._


End file.
